A Victory for Shadowy Crusader : As Persistent as a Nazi Hunter and as Duplicitous as a Con Man, Mike Echols ‘Stings’ Pedophile Group and Stirs a Tempest in San Francisco

To the small group of men who convened monthly at the Potrero Hill Public Library, James Hankins seemed like their kind of guy.

He’d seen their phone number in a gay newspaper and said he was thrilled to discover an organization of men who so proudly shared his taboo longings. Come to our next meeting, Hankins was told. It would be held at the usual place.

And so, as unknowing parents picked out storybooks with their children downstairs, the hefty, talkative Texan joined the circle of avowed pedophiles meeting upstairs at the library.

They didn’t know that Hankins was a spy--that he was, in fact, an iconoclastic crusader, book author and fugitive from justice named Mike Echols. He had a tape recorder in his pocket and an agenda all his own.

So began a journalistic sting that in recent weeks has pushed the live-and-let-live sensibilities of San Francisco to their limits. When KRON-TV, with no small help from Echols, aired a series of exposes on an organization called the North American Man-Boy Love Assn., much of the city was shocked to learn that such a group existed, let alone met in a neighborhood library.

Outraged parents demanded to know how city officials could allow the group to meet in a place that is a haven for children. Meanwhile, much of the large, mostly liberal gay community rushed to ostracize the shadowy group that has long been a small but very controversial presence in the city’s gay pride parade. As public relations problems go, nothing quite compares with NAMBLA, an organization whose very existence reinforces the stereotype that homosexuals recruit children into their way of life.

People who have long hoped the pedophile group would just go away seem to have gotten their wish--at least temporarily. A spokesman at NAMBLA’s New York headquarters says the cause will survive what he portrays as just the latest dose of society’s persecution. But in San Francisco, the furor led to the arrest of one man and seems to have driven other members into hiding.

And all of it started with Echols, a 47-year-old former social worker-turned-journalist who approaches his task with the relentlessness of a Nazi hunter and the duplicity of a con man. His undercover exploits not only inspired KRON’s series but also brought NAMBLA unwanted television coverage on CNN and Geraldo Rivera’s investigative tabloid show, “Now It Can Be Told.”

“I infiltrated NAMBLA because I think it’s ridiculous that a group as dangerous as this is could operate like a local Kiwanis Club,” Echols declares. “It’s an organization of pedophiles who network with each other to learn how to seduce kids. . . .

“I’m thankful to have exposed NAMBLA to the American public for what they really are--i.e., an egregious group of child molesters, nothing more and nothing less.”

NAMBLA prefers another image for itself.

“We see ourselves as a civil rights group, actually,” says Renato Corraza, a spokesman for the group in New York. “We see our platform as the liberation of young people.”

Founded in 1978 after a police raid on an alleged group of pedophiles in Boston, NAMBLA champions the view that laws and mores forbidding consensual sex between adults and children are symptoms of an oppressive society afflicted with sexual hang-ups.

The group claims more than 1,000 members, and Corraza says subscribers to its monthly bulletin include about 100 men imprisoned on sex offenses. Corraza emphasizes that NAMBLA has survived a variety of criminal investigations.

Police officials say NAMBLA, as a group, is difficult to pursue in a criminal investigation because of the line that separates free speech from conspiracy. San Francisco Police Inspector Tom Eisenmann, who has tracked NAMBLA for several years, says group members clearly share information about ways to seduce boys and avoid law enforcement--but it is rare to link specific discussions with specific victims.

In infiltrating NAMBLA, Echols engaged in the sort of intelligence gathering that police may be hard-pressed to justify under court rulings that discourage spying on private groups.

That doesn’t mean police haven’t cracked down on NAMBLA members. Four men connected with NAMBLA in Los Angeles, for example, were arrested in 1989 in connection with a child pornography operation, Los Angeles police officials say. Eisenmann says at least a dozen Bay Area members have been arrested in recent years, including four involved in the operation of a Thailand orphanage.

In the mysterious Mike Echols, NAMBLA has a nemesis who is a rather shadowy figure in his own right. As KRON reporter Greg Lyon puts it, it wasn’t as if Mother Teresa walked in with the story.

The fugitive had slipped into San Francisco one night from a motel where he was staying under an alias. Around his neck hung a prominent cross to proclaim his Christian faith, and on his head this night was a tam-o’-shanter. Mike Echols likes caps. He’s worn wigs and dyed his hair to disguise his appearance, but it doesn’t seem to be in Echols’ nature to dress for anonymity.

When the waitress at a Chinese restaurant led Echols to a window table, he nervously demurred. You never could tell who might walk by and recognize him, he explained.

Echols says he simply doesn’t want to go to jail. Over the past six years, he has spent about seven months in custody as result of a theft conviction in December, 1986, in Clear Creek County, Colo.

It’s a long story and, he insists, a bum rap. Echols was set free on an appeal bond by one judge, but another judge revoked it and ordered him to turn himself in. But the day before, Echols says, he had received an anonymous warning that he would be killed if he returned to jail.

He is now wanted on a warrant for interstate flight to avoid incarceration.

All considered, Echols would much rather be known as the author of the book “I Know My First Name Is Steven,” a chronicle of the extraordinary saga of Steven Stayner. Echols’ manuscript was the basis of the 1989 NBC miniseries by the same name, and his book was released in paperback in December.

Stayner was the Modesto youth who at age 7 was kidnaped by pedophile Kenneth Eugene Parnell and held until he escaped seven years later. Stayner had been sexually assaulted and forced into living as his abductor’s “son” in the Ukiah, Calif., area. Parnell, after serving five years of an eight-year prison sentence, was set free in 1985. Stayner died in a motorcycle accident at age 24.

Parnell wasn’t known to have any involvement with NAMBLA. But to Echols, the organization is virtually a collection of Kenneth Parnells in training.

It’s tempting, Echols acknowledges with a laugh, to interpret his fugitive escapades as part of a bizarre book tour. In addition to his dealings with KRON, Echols says he has done more than 35 radio talk shows and a dozen newspaper interviews and has appeared twice on national TV since “Steven” was released.

Echols, who says his own childhood and adolescence were free of sexual exploitation, says he developed an academic interest in the subject during his college days, when he was training to be a counselor. He wrote his thesis on the sexual abuse of children.

Echols says he is driven by religious faith--that his goal is “exposing child molesters and anyone else who preys on people who are weaker than they are.” He disputes the accusation that he harbors a hatred of homosexuals.

“That’s a crock,” Echols says. “I am pedophobic. You’re damn right I am. And I would hope the vast majority of people in this country are pedophobic. But homophobic? No, sir.”

Echols says he had no qualms about deceiving NAMBLA because, after all, that’s precisely what pedophiles do when they coerce and exploit children.

His visit to Potrero Hill Public Library was the second time he had infiltrated the group. He met Corraza and other prominent NAMBLA members in New York in 1984 after writing letters to the group identifying himself as “a wealthy homosexual pedophile” offering financial aid.

They never suspected he was a phony, he says. It was easy.

“I’m certain they can’t conceive of anyone saying they are a pedophile when they are not,” Echols says. “That’s the way it was in New York, and that’s the way they were in San Francisco.”

KRON’s “Target 4” investigative team couldn’t help but be intrigued when Mike Echols walked in with his tape recording and the story tip.

A background check, they say, showed that Echols was candid about his own credentials, good and bad. A check of library records showed that NAMBLA, on its application to use the facility, agreed that its meetings would be open to the public. Producer Jon Dann provided Echols with a miniature camera with a lipstick-size lens to surreptitiously record NAMBLA’s next meeting.

“Echols provided an opportunity, and NAMBLA provided an opportunity,” Dann says. “These guys wanted to have a public meeting in a public place.”

On Jan. 4 KRON decided to test the courage of NAMBLA’s convictions. Echols was in place and taping with the miniature camera when reporter Greg Lyons and a cameraman abruptly interrupted the meeting.

The 10 men present reacted the way cockroaches do when the kitchen light comes on. Echols did too, maintaining his cover for the work yet to come.

After the footage aired on KRON, Lyon says, he expected the story to play itself out in a few days. Instead, it reverberated in the Bay Area for weeks.

Angry parents besieged city officials with complaints. Library commissioners said NAMBLA had as much right to use the facility as any group but agreed to change their policies. Meeting notices would have to be posted 72 hours in advance--time enough for parents to keep their children away from the library or, for that matter, to stage a protest. In any case, library officials say they don’t expect NAMBLA to return any time soon.

Gays reacted with anger--and with a struggle over the politically correct stance. Many emphasize that NAMBLA’s First Amendment rights should be respected. But they also consider the group’s philosophy to be indefensible. Long before the uproar in San Francisco, NAMBLA was banned from meeting in a gay community center in New York and barred from the annual gay pride parade in Los Angeles. (Later reports by KRON somewhat mollified gays by emphasizing that a large majority of pedophiles are heterosexual.)

“It’s the rich relative looking down on the poor relative--that old story,” says Corraza, the NAMBLA spokesman. “Thirty years ago, gays were regarded with the same contempt that boy-lovers are regarded with today. . . . Gays are afraid of losing what they’ve achieved until now.”

Michael C. Botkin, a correspondent for the gay-oriented Bay Area Reporter, endorses the view that KRON had engaged in a “witch hunt” and criticized KRON for not revealing the full extent of Echols’ role.

When the station reported that NAMBLA members were discussing the possibility of publishing an official calendar featuring photos of young boys, Botkin notes, it didn’t mention that Echols had proposed the idea.

“An agent provocateur was sent in to disrupt the group, which he did,” Botkin says. “They were able to do a one-sided attack, and it was successful.”

KRON’s Dann and Lyon say they considered Echols a source and nothing more. Echols, meanwhile, laughs off the criticism.

“Well, that’s true,” he says when told of Botkin’s criticism.

NAMBLA attempted to mount its own defense, but the efforts of spokesman Nicholas Alan Palmer proved to be another embarrassment.

Echols, in his role as Hankins, stung Palmer twice. The first time he arranged to meet Palmer for dinner in an Oakland restaurant to push his calendar idea. At a nearby table sat a crew from “Now It Can Be Told,” with one of those miniature cameras. The video of the meeting was later aired nationwide.

The second sting came a few days later when Palmer, using the alias Alan Davis, represented NAMBLA in a brief but memorable interview at KRON’s studios.

During the interview, Palmer asserted that none of the group members had ever been arrested in San Francisco. But when Lyon confronted “Alan Davis” with the fact that he knew his true name to be Nicholas Palmer, the trapped man stammered and abruptly halted the interview.

Palmer, as Lyon reported, was on probation as the result of a conviction on a solicitation charge involving a 9-year-old boy. That disclosure certainly shocked the Bay Area parents who recognized Palmer as their 8-year-old son’s piano teacher. Subsequently, Palmer was rearrested for violating probation terms that forbade such personal contact with children.

As for Mike Echols, he’s still on the run.

His spirits are buoyed by the supreme satisfaction of tormenting NAMBLA. But his Bay Area adventure provided a more tangible benefit as well.

Two San Francisco attorneys, Al Boro and Barney Cassidy, have agreed to represent Echols in his Colorado legal troubles on a pro bono basis. Boro says he got to know Echols while advising Potrero Hill parents in their dealings with the library commission.

Echols is grateful for the support but not entirely optimistic.

This time, Echols says, it’s not pedophiles who want to shut him up. It’s the forces of darkness who figure he knows too much about that illegal, top-secret nuclear-waste dump site out near Clear Creek. . . .

It is, he admits, another long story.